Jack

“Satan is a liberal, anything goes, no rules, no

laws, no borders, no evil, murder is encouraged,

law and order is condemned, can you believe

any sane human would be a liberal??? NO WAY.”

Jack (I won't give his last name) shared these comments on Facebook reacting to the posting of a generic statement from nolabels.org on the need for National unity. It called for ending “political polarization” and “breaking the gridlock in Congress”…pretty standard stuff in this day in age.

Jack fits a stereotype (white male over 60 – his picture is below), but his comments shouldn’t be dismissed or marginalized by either Conservatives or Liberals simply because they express an extreme position. If his words were a picture, we would be wrong to focus solely on the colors.

I believe if pressed most Conservatives would not defend the notion that Liberals promote murder, that Liberals advocate the elimination of laws and regulations (they’re usually attacked for the opposite), that they want the abolishment of all boarders, or that Satan, a religious construct, has a political affiliation.  Is God really a Conservative?

Yet even then I think a majority of those politically Conservative would support Jack. They would because he represents what they feel. He articulates at a primary level the fear they fear. Jack essentially mirrors their emotions.

How did this fear and the hatred that has grown from that fear become so pervasive? Looking back through my generation I can remember that Liberal and Conservative positions were argued passionately, including their impact on foreign affairs.  However, I cannot recall a time in the last century when the supporters of an opposing issue were desperately feared.

Political party affiliation wasn’t limited by philosophical leanings as it is today. The socially liberal Republicans prior to the 1990s are now not only publicly extinct; they are viewed as never existing. That is hard to believe. The joke that says a Republican Congressman is anti-abortion until his girlfriend gets pregnant has real teeth.

I firmly believe the beginning of this divide began specifically in August 1987.

Analysis after World War II concluded that the totalitarian axis powers (notably Germany) were able to exist at all because of their control of mass media, a new 20^th century phenomenon. They concluded that unchallenged information made possible the horrors we can barely grasp today. It answered the question, “how could any nation let this happen?”.

In 1949 the US responded to this reality by having the new FCC enact the Fairness Doctrine , which mandated that in order to be licensed to broadcast, a station had to provide competing views on issues of national interest. This doctrine stood in place with practically no complaint by the public for 38 years (and through 6 Presidents) before Ronald Reagan succumbed to pressures in his seventh year. He ended it in August 1987 and soon after vetoed Congress’s attempt to make it law.  In less than a year, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk began their non-stop, dogmatic, hate-filled rhetoric…the seeds for making Jack who he is today.

The Republicans are a minority party, but they have been finely crafted by the circumstances that have evolved over the past 30 years. They have become attuned to the necessities of obtaining and maintaining power. They only needed money and Rush Limbaugh (figuratively speaking).

They have fed and been fed by the fears this new era of echo communication has engendered. In order to maintain power they need to keep their entire Party in lockstep. They do this by supporting the communication that keeps their Conservative minority (the famous Trump base) in lockstep, then using that base to keep individual Republican feet to the flame or face losing elections.

They need Jack to be afraid and to hate. It is their mother’s milk.

There are easily discernible reasons why Trump is as he is, even medical ones (take 20 minutes to read about people with the relatively rare condition known as a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, it explains everything). It is less understandable why intelligent men and women in Congress cannot see the danger his Office presents to this Nation.

These Republican leaders in Washington are so compromised by their desire for power and the wealthy that finance them, they cannot confront the Jacks of the Nation, no matter how ludicrous and destructive Jack’s fears are.

With Woodward’s account and the declaration of another Trump official, the instability of Donald Trump (something painfully obvious since he excoriated his inauguration coverage by, what we now know as, the “enemy of the people”) has now been sounded publically. That bell cannot be un-rung.  It all depends on Republicans in Congress and, to a lesser extent, this coming election November 6^th  to stop the bleeding.

If 3 Republican Senators said they would not vote for Kavanaugh’s confirmation in favor of a bipartisan panel of Republicans and Democrats to produce a list of acceptable Conservative nominees (in the style of Anthony Kennedy) that Trump had to accept, it would change the entire trajectory of Washington governance. It won’t happen. But the irony is that it would be in the Republican Party’s best interest if it did.

What do you think Jack?